before the congregation, as it is confessed in the council of Mentzm, and inserted by Burchard" into his decree. But when the lay piety began to cool, and the zeal of some clergymen wax too hot, they would needs heighten this custom of publication of some sins to a law of the publishing of all sins. This being judged to be inconvenient, expressed the first decree for the seal of confession in the Latin church. Now see how it is uttered, and it will sufficiently inform us both of the practice and the opinion which antiquity had of the obligation to the seal. Illam contra apostolicam regulam præsumptionem, &c., that is, 'it was against the apostolical ordinance that a law should enjoin that the priest should reveal all those sins which had been told him in confession.' It might be done, so it were not required and exacted, and yet might be so required, so it were not a publication of all. Non enim omnium hujusmodi sunt peccata, saith S. Leo, 'some sins are inconvenient to be published, it is not fit the world should know all,' therefore some they might, or else he had said nothing. The reason which he gives makes the business somewhat clearer, for he derives it not from any simple necessity of the thing or a divine right, but lest men out of inordinate love to themselves, should rather refuse to be washed than buy their purity with so much shame.' The whole epistle hath many things in it excellently to the same purpose. I say no more, the doctrine and practice of antiquity is sufficiently evident, and that there is nothing less than an universal tradition for the seal of confession to be observed in all cases, even of sins of the highest malignity. Thus these fathers confessors are made totally inexcusable by concealing a treason which was not revealed to them in a formal confession, and had been likewise culpable though it had, there being, as I have shewn, no such sacredness of the seal as to be inviolable in all cases whatsoever. I have now done with the several considerations of the persons to whom the question was propounded, they were the fathers confessors in the day, but it was Christ the Lord in my text: the question itself follows; IV. Shall we command FIRE to come from heaven and consume them? The question was concerning the fate of a whole town of Samaria, in our case it was more; of the fate of a whole kingdom. It had been well if such a question had been silenced by a direct negative or (as the judges of the Areopage used to do) put off ad diem longissimum, that they might have expected the answer three ages after. De morte hominis nulla est cunctatio longa, No demur had been too long in a case of so much and so royal blood, the blood of a king, of a king's children, of a king's kingdom. Πριαμὸς Πριαμοιό τε παίδες 4, king and kingdom should have been made a solemn sacrifice to appease their solemn deliberate malice. I said deliberate, for they were loth to be malicious without good advice, and therefore they asked their question, worthy of an oracle, even no less than Delphic, where an evil spirit was the numen, and a witch the prophet. For the question was such of which a Christian could not doubt, though he had been fearfully scrupulous in his resolutions. For who ever questioned the unlawfulness of murder, of murdering innocents, of murdering them who were confessed righteous? For such was their proposal, being rather willing that catholics should perish with those whom they thought heretics, than that there should be no blood spilt. But to the question: it was fire they called for. The most merciless of all the elements. No possibility of relenting when once kindled and had its object. It was the fittest instrument for merciless men, men of no bowels, whose malice like their instrument, did agere ad extremum suarum virium, work to the highest of its possibility. Secondly, it was fire indeed they called for, but not like that in my text, not fire from heaven. They might have called as long and as loud as those priests did who contested with Elisha', no fire would have come from heaven to have consumed what they had intended for a sacrifice. God's anathema's post not so fast as ours do. Deus non est sicut homo. Man curseth often when God blesseth, men condemn whom God acquits, and therefore they were loth to trust God with their cause, they therefore take it into their own hands. And certainly if to their anathema's they add some faggots of their own, and gunpowder, 'tis odds but then we may be consumed indeed; and so did they, their fire was not from heaven. V. Lastly, it was a fire so strange, that it had no EXAMPLE.-The apostles indeed pleaded a mistaken precedent for the reasonableness of their demand, they desired leave to do but "even as Elias did.” The Greeks only retain this clause, it is not in the bibles of the church of Rome; and really these Romano-barbari could never pretend to any precedent for an act so barbarous as theirs. Adrimelech indeed killed a king, but he spared the people; Haman would have killed the people, but spared the king; but that both king and people, princes and judges, branch and rush and root should die at once (as if Caligula's" were actuated and all England upon one head) was never known till now, that all the malice in the world met in this as in a centre. The Sicilian even-song, the matins of S. Bartholomew, known for the pitiless and damned massacres, were but κáπνov σкías ovapy, the dream of the shadow of smoke,' if compared with this great fire. In tam occupato sæculo fabulas vulgaris nequitia non invenit. This was a busy age; Herostratus must have invented a more sublimed malice than the burning of one temple, or not have been so much as spoke of since the discovery of the powder-treason. But I must make more haste, I shall not else climb the sublimity of this impiety. Nero was sometimes the populare odium, was popu larly hated,' and deserved it too, for he slew his master, and his wife, and all his family once or twice over, opened his mother's womb, fired the city, laughed at it, slandered the Christians for it, but yet all these were but principia malorum, the very first rudiments of evil. Add then to these, Herod's master-piece at Ramaha, as it was deciphered by the tears and sad threnes of the matrons in an universal mourning for the loss of their pretty infants, yet this of Herod will prove but an infant wickedness, and that of Nero, the evil but of one city. I would willingly have found out an example, but I see I cannot, should I put into the scale the extract of all the old tyrants famous in antique stories, Bistonii stabulum regis, Busiridis aras, Antiphate mensas et Taurica regna Thoantis". Should I take for true story the highest cruelty as it was fancied by the most hieroglyphical Egyptian, this alone would weigh them down, as if the Alps were put in scale against the dust of a balance. For had this accursed treason prospered, we should have had the whole kingdom mourn for the inestimable loss of its chiefest glory, its life, its present joy, and all its very hopes for the future. For such was their destined malice, that they would not only have inflicted so cruel a blow, but have made it incurable, by cutting of our supplies of joy, the whole succession of the line royal. Not only the vine itself, but all the gemmula, and the tender olive branches should either have been bent to their intentions, and made to grow crooked, or else been broken. And now after such a sublimity of malice, I will not instance in the sacrilegious ruin of the neighbouring temples, which needs must have perished in the flame; nor in the disturbing the ashes of our entombed kings, devouring their dead ruins like sepulchral dogs; these are but minutes, in respect of the ruin prepared for the living temples. Stragem sed istam non tulit Patris periret fabrica. Ergo quæ poterit lingua retexere Let us then return to God the cup of thanksgiving,' He having poured forth so largely to us of the cup of salvation.' We cannot want wherewithal to fill it, here is matter enough for an eternal thankfulness, for the expression of which a short life is too little; but let us here begin our hallelujahs, hoping to finish them hereafter, where the many quires of angels will fill the consorta. "Praise the Lord ye house of Levi, ye that fear the Lord, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord out of Sion, which dwelleth at Jerusalem." с Prudent. hymn. [cathem. xi. 41-v. 81.] 4 [sic edd.] d e [Ps. cxxxv. 20, 21] |